Seriously this.
If you think pandas are like the second coming of Jesus or the new wonder of the world and you love it sooo much then just go play it. Why is this frantic effort to justify MoP receiving lower ratings and selling less ?? The numbers are what they are, your excuses will not change them.

And metacritic was the same metacritic when it was giving previous expansions much higher ratings.

Vanilla:
Metascore 93, Player score 7.1

The Burning Crusade:
Metascore 91, Player score 7.1

Wrath of the Lich King:
Metascore 91, Player score 6.7

Cataclysm:
Metascore 91, Player score 5.1

Mists of Pandaria:
Metascore 83, Player score 4.4

If it was OK then, it is OK now too.

Did I mention that people who don't play WoW (anymore) can also vote on metacritic? You don't even have to give a good reason to give a game a low score. You can give WoW 5 "because I say it sucks"

That's the problem with the internet. Every idiot with half a brain has access to it, and you notice that. I bet half of the kids that voted on MOP on metacritic plays Guild Wars 2 and is 12 years old. Not to mention the people that probably haven't even reached 90 yet and are butt hurt because 85-90 isn't done in 10 hours when questing normally.

I still got 2 months of game-time left, but it seems that I have to stop playing because of all these bad reviews... Jokes aside, I used to buy games only with good scores from sites like gamespot or IGN (that was ages ago), but then I noticed that I have a mind of my own and now I feel that I missed couple of great games that are not available anymore!

That's the problem with the internet. Every idiot with half a brain has access to it, and you notice that. I bet half of the kids that voted on MOP on metacritic plays Guild Wars 2 and is 12 years old. Not to mention the people that probably haven't even reached 90 yet and are butt hurt because 85-90 isn't done in 10 hours when questing normally.

Not defending metacritic here, but this isn't exactly a stunning defense of WoW either. There have always been idiots on the internet, and WoW's had pissed off ex-players for a very long time (how many people hated Wrath? Cata?) Those people were giving bad reviews on metacritic then too.

If you're going to attack metacritic, just say you can't trust any of the scores, good or bad. Don't just attack the bad scores (as you implicitly do here, by only giving explanations why the newest expansion got a lower score without explaining why any of the other expansions got higher scores). Or comment that the high scores could easily be posted by fan boys who don't care about the quality of the game so long as it's a Blizzard game, AND the negative scores can come from haters. If you're only attacking the one side, you look less like someone pointing out the (many) flaws of metacritic and more like a defender of WoW who only attacks things that disagree with your own opinion (not saying that you are, that's just the impression I get from your post).

Seriously, just say "metacritic is untrustworthy because anyone can give any score/review, regardless of reason or experience." Nice and neutral, and makes the exact same point.

You know, I hear comments like this at the start of every expansion. Maybe the PvPers need to stop crying wolf?

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

EDIT1: We're not talking about the USER SUBMITTED REVIEWS on metacritic here (which can be ignored), we're talking about the actual CRITIC Reviews from respected people like IGN, eurogamer and gamespot.

I dunno if I should laugh or cry at this statement. This is like looking at twitch and judging how good a game is.

I don't understand what this thread is even about. WoW has numerous, undeniable flaws, but unless you're going to explain what you think those are, and give suggestions as to what you think can be done to fix them, bringing up useless crap like "METACRITIC SAID THIS" is meaningless, regardless if it's positive OR negative.

The fact that metacritic gave cata a 91 shows that they are reviewing solely based of the first couple weeks of the game. Cata was super hyped and awesome looking when it was released, then fell apart and became arguably the worst expansion yet.

Any reason to believe the same won't happen with this expansion?

At least Cataclysm promised and delivered on something that drew old customers back to the game: a return to BC-difficulty heroics & raids. It was a fun gimmick for a while, and many players on my server came back to check it out.

WOTLK
Competition and compared to, in reviews: Warhammer, age of conan maybe aion.
Wotlk holds its ground as neither of those are ground-breaking and are bit similiar (cept conan with some combat stuff and boobs..)

CATA
Competition and compared to, in reviews: LOTRO..later rift (rift came about month after 4.1).
Cata holds its ground as neither lotro and rift are ground-breaking and are similiar to wow's style (hotkey mmos).

MOP
Competition and compared to, in reviews: Guild wars 2, Swtor, Tera, The Secret World(maybe) + others in past/soon maybe.
Mop brings same old with some new features(and its okay if you like that).
Swtor brings great story and voice-acting, still bit hotkeyish mmo.
GW2..well we know all the hype that had and what it brings.
Tera had pretty good new combat system.
Secret world..uuh..err..got released. Ok questing maybe?

Is it wonder MOP got lower score? I admit I havent played mop at all, but its no wonder it got lower score with high guns pointing around and changing lot of stuff. Its good that its still holding up, but getting lower score than xpacks in past is no wonder. Its just fact that getting lower scores starts getting "its still doing stuff great but soon its time to change" (their subjective opinion and due other mmos starting to get more and more action-oriented and moving away from hotkeys and old questing)

"In the tone of their complaint you can see a mind already made up. Instead, it’s about affirmation they expected and didn’t receive. It’s not about the game getting universal praise from every writer reviewing it. It’s about getting universal praise for buying it."

Entirely speculative either way. To my mind between launch and what's on the PTR for 5.1 there's already more entertainment in MoP for level 90 players of all types than in Cataclysm from start to finish.

Originally Posted by mosely

At least Cataclysm promised and delivered on something that drew old customers back to the game: a return to BC-difficulty heroics & raids. It was a fun gimmick for a while, and many players on my server came back to check it out.

In the long run, that didn't end well.

People will be happy enough to stand up for America if they're comfortable with what American stands for.